Ralph Waldo Emerson

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Sympathy is a supporting atmosphere, and in it we unfold easily and well.

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

I didn’t find my friends; the good Lord gave them to me.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.